Grand Cochon, a culinary competition held at Viceroy Snowmass in Colorado is raising the public profile of education surrounding heritage breed pigs. The 2016 Cochon555 Tour featured 10 chefs in 10 cities cooking 10 heritage breed pigs using everything from the snout to the tail.

In all over the last six months, 50 pigs were used to make 300 dishes and determine one winner.

Chef Josh Henderson brought both finesse and flavor (making sure the Duroc was fed hazelnuts for the last month to help the pig’s fat content) to his dishes like nine-spice pork belly.

“That helps the fat content more than flavor,” Henderson explained. “It’s a nice way for that pig to spend its last 30 days.”

Jona Kim preferred to use Mulefoot bellies because they are smaller and more well-balanced, in terms of meat verses fat content, with an “amazing” flavor.

Chef Angie Mar used a Berkshire Tamworth cross — which she describes as a little more beefy and gamey, but still maintaining a good fat content — to make a dark chocolate cake using pork fat and butter, pork lard cream cheese frosting, chocolate-covered chiccarones, and pork neck caramel drizzled over the top. But her favorite was a birthday cake made of pig’s blood to celebrate the 8th anniversary of Cochon.

Chef Walter Manzke chose dishes — like braised pig belly atop potato puree topped with caviar and a tart filled with pork innards — based on a wide spectrum of flavors and techniques to represent himself in the competition. And it ultimately paid off, as Manzke was crowned the "King of Porc."

Foodable Network

Foodable is the premier Network for the Restaurant and Hospitality industry. As the leading producer of Social TV, we reach hundreds of thousands of social connections that are targeted operators, foodies, chefs, suppliers, and consumers that thrive on learning more about the industry. Though quickly growing, the Foodable Network, featured on YouTube and iTunes, currently hosts seven shows: Table 42, Rock My Restaurant, Across the Bar, Food as a Lifestyle, On Foodable, Fast Casual Nation and more!

News by US City

The way it works

Our Foodable Top 25 restaurant rankings are not hand-selected or chosen by an editor. These lists are based off of unstructured data from Foodable Labs, which tracks over 171K restaurants and brands, and calculates data based on the mass social audience across multiple markets and countries. The Foodable Top 25 drills down into the local-social audience, or geo-located social actions, in each respective city or market we cover. We seek the real social impact of what people think about the experience of your restaurant at the local level.